FREDERICKSBURG (50, alt., 6,819 pop.), where George Washington attended school for four months and his mother spent her last years, where Monroe practiced law, John Paul Jones had his only home, and the armies of the 1860's fought their bloodiest battles, is at the head of navigation on the Rappahannock River.

The city's eastern boundary is the river, crossed by a railroad bridge and by Free Bridge, which passes over a tiny island. Northward is the old town of Falmouth, and southward and westward residential areas rise toward pleasant fields on rolling land. Old Fredericksburg is a rectangular plot from the river to the higher level of Princess Anne Street. Straight streets, under arching trees, crisscross at right angles. Commerce follows William Street from the center of the city to Caroline Street, where grocery stores, meat markets, hardware stores, motion picture houses, and restaurants are in full possession. Negroes and factory workers live in small old houses huddled together beside the river and in several outlying areas.

Houses, cemeteries, and monuments tell of two centuries of distinguished people and stirring events. Tourist conscious now, the city presents an almost universal gleam of fresh paint, applied to white clapboards, green shutters, and to the trim of red brick Colonial buildings.

Fredericksburg has long been the urban center of a fertile agricultural region. Its people still trade with country folk who market and buy here. The city's industrial plants, with an annual pay roll Of $2,500,000, manufacture flour, clothing, textiles, shoes, crates, and boxes. But Fredericksburg is primarily an old residential community that cherishes the profitable aura of its Dast.

The dog mart, held in the city park each October, perpetuates an old custom. It is preceded by a bench show, street parade, and homblowing contest, and is followed by a ball. The story goes that first settlers brought fine hunting dogs with them, of which the Indians were so covetous that a day was set each year when settlers traded dogs for furs and other articles. The barter was begun in 1698 and continued until interrupted by the Revolutionary War. In 1927 it was revived.

Fredericksburg's authenticated record begins in 1608 with a visit by Captain John Smith. In 1671 John Buckner, Robert Bryan, and Thomas Royston patented here a tract called later the Lease-land. In 1722 therewas, a public ferry across the river'from. Mrs.Fitzhugh's plantation . . . to the wharf on the leased land of Thomas Buckner and John Royston.' About 1723 William Levingston moved here and built 'a dwelling and kitchen.' In 1727 the general assembly directed that 50 acres of the Lease-land be laid out, and established a town for Spotsylvania County by the name of Fredericksburg-for Frederick, Prince of Wales and father of George III. Colonel William Byrd H, visiting the sparsely settled town five years later, was impressed by the stone prison, 'strong enough to hold Jack Shepherd,' and by the versatility of 'Mrs.Levistone,' who was a 'Doctress and Coffee Woman,' and 'qualify'd to exercise 2 other callings.' He noted that 'the Court-house and the Church are going to be built here, and then both Religion and justice will help to enlarge the Place.'

The town grew as a port. Ships lay 'close to the Wharf, within 30 Yards of the Public Warehouses, which are built in the figure of a Cross.' Wagons jolted in from the countryside with wheat and tobacco for export. Rows of buildings, many of brick, began to rise on Sophia and Caroline Streets, and mansions were built on the 'hill.' In 1734 a new ferry was authorized 'on Rappahannock river, from the warehouse landing, at the town of Fredericksburg . . . to the land of William Thornton.' A French traveler wrote in 1765: 'Back settlements send down to Fredericksburg great quantities of butter, cheese, flax, hemp, flower and some tobacco.' Soon wheat and flour led the exports.

During the Revolution the town furnished leaders for the Continental army and arms from its 'gunnery.' In an old order book, dated September 18, 1783, is an entry'to Mary Driskell, a nurse in the Continental Hospital at Fredericksburg, from January 9, '79, to May '82, by which appears to be due the amount certified, 266 Pounds: 19 Shillings.'

In 1781 Fredericksburg was incorporated as a town. After the Revolution it prospered steadily. In 1807, however, during the obsequies of William Stanard, an overturned candle started a fire that reduced half the town to ashes. But Fredericksburg recovered. As center for a large number of slaveholding landed proprietors, some of whom lived in town, it entered a period of luxury, when racecourses, wine cellars, and balls reached their apogee. Great canvas-covered wagons, some as high as 12 feet, lumbered in from d up country' with loads of grain, tobacco, and other produce, drawn by four to eight horses with bells jangling on their collars.They returned laden with groceries, wines, housefumishings, and other imported supplies. Two hundred of these huge conveyances were often in Fredericksburg at one
time, 'bringing business for the many vessels, some of them large threemasted schooners, which came from all parts of the globe to anchor at the wharves.' In 1822 Fredericksburg was made a central point for the distribution of mail to five States, and the mails became so heavy that surreys were used instead of postriders. During this era of prosperity even funerals were occasions for entertaining, refreshments being served in dark wrappings and wine drunk from glasses festooned with long black ribbons. In 1840 there were 73 stores, 4 semiweekly newspapers, 3,974 inhabitants, and exports amounted to about $4,000,000 yearly.

Fredericksburg's distinguished men were not all of the Revolutionary period. Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great marine cartographer, spent part of his life here. Another native was Maury's brother-in-law, William Lewis Herndon, who worked with him for a time at the National Observatory and, in 1851, was apparently the first to explore the Amazon to its headwaters.

The War between the States struck Fredericksburg down. Situated halfway between Washington and Richmond and on main roads and a rail route, it was a major objective of both armies. It changed hands seven times during the conflict and achieved, with its immediate neighborhood, the unhappy distinction of being one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of history.

In 1879 the general assembly created 'the city of Fredericksburg . . . one body politic, in fact and in name.' By the beginning of the twentieth century the scars of battle and Reconstruction were fairly smoothed out, A and since then improvements have changed a sleepy community into a
modern little city. In 1912 Fredericksburg exchanged its councilmanic form of government for the city manager plan.

POINTS OF INTEREST

(Buildings to which the public is admitted are usually open unofficially earlier and later than hours stated. Guide service at $1 per hour can be arranged at Ike chamber of commerce.)
V

1. CITY HALL (Open 9-5 weekdays), Princess Anne St. between William and George Sts., is a gray-painted two-story brick building, with one-story wings. Narrow steps lead to three entrance stoops. Built in 1813, it houses city offices and the chamber of commerce. Council records preserved here date from 1782. In 1824 La Fayette was given a public reception in the assembly room. The hall housed soldiers of General Whittle's Confederate brigade in 1862, and later was used as Union barracks and hospital.

2. ST.GEORGE'S CHURCH (open daily), NE. comer Princess Anne and George Sts., is a gray brick edifice of Victorian design, with tower and spire centered on the front. Built in 1849, it is the third on this site. The first was erected in 1732 by Colonel Henry Willis, 'top man of the place.' The first rector of St.George's Parish to officiate in this building was the Reverend Patrick Henry, uncle of the orator; Charles Washington and James Monroe were vestrymen; the bell was given in 17511 by Colonel John Spotswwd, son of the Colonial governor.

Among the graves in the churchyard are those of William Paul and of John Dandridge, Washington's father-in-law. Colonel Fielding Lewis and two of his children are buried beneath the steps of the church.

3. The PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (open daily), SW. comer Princess Anne and George Sts., built in 1833, is a red brick building with a recessed portico having two Tuscan columns between anta walls, a plain pediment, and a square white cupola. Clam Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, attended the wounded here when the church was used as a Federal hospital. Two cannon balls have been built into the left column of the portico, where balls struck during the bombardment of Fredericksburg.

Presbyterianism was established in Fredericksburg in 1806 by Dr.Samuel B. Wilson. Annoyed at the Rising Sun Tavern by men 'drinking, cursing, and gambling,' he believed the town needed regeneration and started his church.

4. The WALLACE LIBRARY (Open 3-6 weekdays), SE. corner Princess Anne and George Sts., a small tan brick building containing more than 6,000 volumes, was opened in 1911.

5. The COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., 9-1 Sat.), Princess Anne St. between George and Hanover Sts., built in 1852, is a two-story buttressed gray stucco structure in Victorian Gothic style. The bell, in a central domed tower, was made in the Paul Revere Foundry at Boston.

This site has been the court green since 1732, when Fredericksburg became the seat of Spotsylvania County. Before and during the Revolution it was the rendezvous of patriots and soldiers. Among the debtors confined to the green on their honor was 'Light Horse Harry' Lee. During the battle of Fredelicksburg in 1862, Federal General D.N.Couch had headquarters in the courthouse, and the tower was his signal station. Records in the vault include the will of Mary Washington, Augustine Washington's commission (1742) as a trustee of Fredericksburg, and the official bill of expenses for the entertainment of La Fayette in 1825.

6. The MASONIC LODGE (open 8:30-5 weekdays, 1:30-5 Sun.; adm. $0.25, largegroups $0.15), NE. corner Princess Anne and Hanover Sts., is a plain two-story building of brick painted gray, with twin end chimneys, erected in 1815. Having functioned under a dispensation after 1752, when George Washington 'entered apprentice,' Lodge No.4 was chartered in 1758 by the Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts under the Grand Lodge of Scotland and accepted a charter from the newly organized Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1778. The Scottish charter is still displayed. An interior doorway and two canopies from the old building on Caroline Street are preserved here, as well as the Bible on which Washington was swom, the minute book with a record of three degrees conferred on Washington, and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington.

7. MASONIC CEMETERY, NW. corner Charles and George Sts., a half acre of turf dotted with mossy tombstones and enclosed by a stone wall, is one of the oldest Masonic burial grounds in America. The land was bought in 1784 by Fredericksburg Lodge No.4. Here is an impressive array of chiseled names, virtue-claiming epitaphs, and coats of arms. Basil Gordon (1768-1817), one of the first millionaires in North America, Robert Lewis, private secretary to his uncle, George Washington, and twice mayor of Fredericksburg, and officers of three wars are buried here.

Covered with wild vines in a far corner is the grave of Lewis Littlepage, bom in Hanover County in 1762 but a resident of Fredericksburg during his early years. As a boy of 18, after writing poetry at the College of William and Mary, be went to Madrid as protoge of John Jay, American minister to Spain, with whom he later quarreled. He joined the Duc de Crillon, distinguished himself in the storming of Gibraltar, and met La Fayette. He visited Poland, was knighted by King Stanislaus, made minister in the Polish cabinet, and sent to conclude a treaty with Catherine of Russia. The Empress 'borrowed' him and sent him against the Turks in the Black Sea, where his fellow townsman, John Paul Jones, was an admiral in the Russian fleet. He served against Russia during the Polish revolution of 1791 and joined Kosciusko in storming Prague in 1794. After an unfortunate love affair with a princess of North Poland and the capture of King Stanislaus by the Russians, Littlepage retired to Fredericksburg, where he died in 1802.

8. The JAMES MONROE LAW OFFICE (open 9-6 daily; adm. $0.25, large groups $0.15), Charles St. between George and William Sts., is a long, story-and-a-half red brick building with small, green-shuttered windows, two simple doorways, three chimneys, and three dormers along the low gabled roof. The whitewashed rear wall faces a little old-fashioned garden. Built in 1758, the building is little altered since the days of Monroe, who practiced law here from 1786 to 1790. The house contains original Monroe furniture of the Louis XVI period, purchased when he was minister to France in 1794, and later used in the White House when Monroe entered it as President in 1817, following its burningby the Britishin 1814. The Monroe Room in the White House is furnished with reproductions of these original Monroe pieces, copied by craftsmen under the direction of Mrs.Herbert Hoover.

In the building are the desk on which Monroe wrote his message to Congress in 1832 enunciating the principles of American foreign policy known as the Monroe Doctrine; his Revolutionary gun, dueling pistols, and sword; a portrait of him by Rembrandt Peale, a portraitby JohnTrumbull (painted on a wooden panel), a miniature by Seme, a bronze bust of La Fayette presented by him to Monroe; letters from La Fayette, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, and others; the dispatch box Monroe carried while negotiating the Louisiana Purchase; the court dress he wore at the court of Napoleon; and many other belongings. The collection also includes Mrs.Monroe's court dresses, jewelry, wedding slippers, dressing table, and other possessions.

9. The SLAVE BLOCK, NW. corner Charles and William Sts., is a circular block of sandstone three feet high, but taller before the street level was raised. One side is hewn to form a step to the top, from which, in antebellum days when the Planters Hotel stood behind it, ladies mounted their horses and slaves were auctioned.

10. HUGH MERCER'S APOTHECARY SHOP (open 9-6 weekdays; adm. $0.25), SW. corner Amelia and Caroline Sts., is assumed to have been in this small story-and-a-half clapboarded structure. The southern portion
of the building, older than the shop, was built in the mid-eighteenth century. Washington kept a desk here for transacting business when in Fredericksburg.

Dr.Hugh Mercer, a Scottish Jacobite, met disaster at Culloden as an army surgeon with Bonnie Prince Charlie, emigrated to America, fought in the French and Indian War, became a close friend of Washington, and on his advice settled in Fredericksburg. Here he practiced medicine and conducted his apothecary shop. He entered the Revolution as a colonel of Militia but was a brigadier general when he was killed at the Battle of Princeton.

During restoration, the removal of lath and plaster revealed the shelves, drawers, and pigeonholes of an old shop, some of the drawer fronts bearing labels apparently in Dr.Mercer's handwriting. The interior is completely furnished with a large collection of apothecary bottles and implements, some found on the place, others belonging to Mercer's descendants. A little garden is maintained as it used to be, with lavender, thyme, and other herbs.

11. The RISING SUN TAVERN (Open 9-5 weekdays, adm. $0.25), Caroline St. between Fauquier and Hawke Sts., a one-and-a-half-story frame building covered with broad hand-beveled clapboards, is approached by a small stone porch, recently restored. Its gabled roof is pierced by three tiny dormers and built-in end chimneys. The banquet room includes a paneled corner fireplace and a handsome built-in cupboard.

The building was erected before the middle of the eighteenth century by John Gordon. Situated on the main north-south highway, it was a stage stop and post office. In the hands of 'Mine Host' Weedon it was a social and political center, where the fiery patriot served sedition as well as wine. Weedon, born in Westmoreland in 1734, was the son of George Weedon and a descendant of a Westmoreland pioneer but often identified as a German named von der Wieden. Here George Mason, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Ludwell Lee met on January 13, 1777, and outlined the bill that Jefferson later phrased and Madison presented to the Virginia assembly in 1785, when it passed as the Statute of Virginia for Religious Liberty. A Peace Ball, attended by Washington and his mother, his officers, La Fayette, Rochambeau, de Grasse, and others, in celebration of victory at Yorktown, was supposedly held in 1781 in the assembly room, long since burned.

12. The HORSE-CHESTNUT TREE, Fauquier St. between Charles and Edward Sts., a large old tree standing close to the walk, is the only survivor of 13 planted by George Washington to symbolize the 13 Original States.

13. MARY WASHINGTON'S HOUSE (Open 9-12, 1-6 weekdays; 1-6 Sun. only in summer; adm. $0.25), NW. corner Lewis and Charles Sts., is the simple white frame structure in which Washington's mother lived from 1772 to 1789. The middle section, built by Washington in 1772, rises two stories from a simple doorway to a plain gable roof. The south wing, part of the original house, has a gabled garret with dormers above the main floor; the north wing, added after Mary Washington's death, has a steep gambrel roof with shallow 'Dutch' dormers. The, interior is restored and furnished as it might have been when Mary Washington occupied it.

Beyond wide porches at the rear is the old-fashioned garden with the original sundial and part of the box-bordered brick walk along which Mrs.Washington went each day to her daughter's home near by. The boxwood she planted still flourish. Here also is the old stone kitchen with the equipment Colonial cooks used-along with 'conjur' perhaps-to prepare the food that helped to create Virginia's reputation for hospitality. Preceding the Revolution Washington persuaded his mother to move from Ferry Farm on the river to the comparative safety of a town house.

Mary Washington, it seems, never visited her son at Mount Vernon. In making clear his wish that she remain away from his house, which resembled a 'well resorted tavern,' Washington wrote, 'This would, were you to be an inhabitant of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things: ist to be always dressing to appear in company; 2nd, to come . . . in a dishabille, or 3rd to be as a prisoner in your bedchamber. The first you'ld not like. . . . the second I should not like. . . . And the 3rd. . . . would not be pleasing to either of us.' So the old lady stayed in Fredericksburg. Her complaint that she had 'never lived so poore' caused a movement in the general assembly for granting her a pension. Washington besought a friend to stop the proceedings, but Mary Washington continued to talk of her poverty and to borrow from neighbors. George Washington, to end the gossip, ceased to rent his mother's 'quarter' a few miles below Ferry Farm, explaining, 'What I shall then give, I shall have credit for,' and avoid being 'viewed as unjust and undutiful son.' Washington frequently visited his mother at Fredericksburg, and on March 11, 1789, he came to say goodby before starting for New York and his inauguration as first President. Mary Washington died the following August.

14. The GEORGE ROGERS CLARK MEMORIAL, Lewis St. and Washington Ave., is a small granite block in a circular grass plot, erected in '1929' in grateful acknowledgment of the valor and the strategic victory' that acquired the Northwest Territory for Virginia. Clark spent part of his childhood about 15 miles south of Fredericksburg.

15. KENMORE (open 9-6 daily, adm- $0.50), Washington Ave. between Lewis and Fauquier Sts., was the home of George Washington's sister, Betty Washington Lewis. Set among tall trees in a walled yard, the twostory red brick house with its low water table of molded brick stands between a pair of detached wings. The gabled roof is pierced by two square built-in end chimneys. The simply framed entrance doors are surmounted by rectangular transoms. Over the rear door a modest portico with four Tuscan columns faces the garden, which has been restored with the boxbordered walk that led to Mary Washington's house.

The fine mahogany stairway in the entrance hall is adorned with a carved lotus motif, and the tall clock standing here belonged to Mary Washington. The reassembled gun over the door at the left is the only firearm extant known to have come from the Fielding Lewis Gunnery, where it was made in 1781. Through this door is the dining room with ceiling, mantel, and
cornice elaborately ornamented in putty stucco. Portraits by John Wollaston of Colonel Fielding Lewis and of his wife, Betty Washington, hang in this room. The end of the hall opens into the parlor or 'great room.' The rich plaster ornament of the ceiling, from which a fine Waterford crystal chandelier is suspended, includes four horns of plenty. Above the handsome carved mantel, which is supported on classic consoles, is a panel framed with Georgian 'dog-ear' trim and embellished with a delicate plaster basrelief representing Aesop's fable of the fox and crow. The subject of this decoration is said to have been suggested by Washington, and the work seems authentically to have been that of Hessian prisoners. The ceilings were e~ecuted by a man whom Washington called 'that Frenchman.' The house is filled with furniture and relics, many of which belonged to the Washington or Lewis family; some are gifts or loans from the Metropolitan Museum,

The four panels of the ceiling in the library represent the four seasons with palm, grape, acorn, and mistletoe. The over-mantel panel frames a decorative basket of flowers and festoon in plaster relief. The bedrooms upstairs are furnished chiefly with heirlooms.

On a plantation of 861 acres purchased from Richard Wyat Royston, Fielding Lewis began to build in 1752 for his second bride, 19-year-old Betty Washington, the only sister of George to reach maturity; but the house was not complete in detail until after 1777. Before that, the home of the Fieldings had become a center of political and social life. Washington frequently recorded visits here. ,

Fielding Lewis was an earnest patriot. He wrote resolutions, endorsed by a large gathering in Fredericksburg, commending Patrick Henry's resistance to Governor Dunmore. He fitted out soldiers at his own expense. As chief commissioner for the manufacturing of small arms in Fredericksburg, he used his own money when public funds ran out. When he died in 1781, he left a debt Of 7,000 Pounds and a mortgage on the house later known as Kenmore.

Mrs.Lewis continued to live here until she sold the house in 1796. Eaxly in the nineteenth century it was bought by the Gordon family, who changed its name to Kenmore. It served as a hospital and military headquarters during the War between the States, when it was considerably damaged, and later it housed a boys' academy.

In 1922 a band of women formed the Kenmore Association to save the house from being pulled down, and raised the money for its purchase and restoration. Woodwork, ceilings, nearly all hardware, and floors are original. The dependencies were completely reconstructed upon excavated foundations. In the kitchen a Negro 'mammy' serves tea and gingerbread to visitors.

16. The MERCER MONUMENT, center of Washington Ave. at Fauquier St., is a bronze figure of General Hugh Mercer by Edward V. Valentine, erected by Congress in 1906.

17. The MARY WASHINGTON MONUMENT, Washington Ave. and Pitt St., a 50-foot granite obelisk near the grave of Mary Washington, was erected by the women of the National Mary Washington Monument Association and dedicated in 1894 with President Grover Cleveland as the speaker. A monument was begun here in 1833, but it stood incomplete until battered to ruins during the War between the States.

18. The CONFEDERATE CEMETERY (open 9-5 daily), entrance Washington Ave. and Amelia St., a large rectangular tract with scattered trees and mossy tombstones behind a four-foot brick wall, was established in 1865 by the Fredericksburg Ladies' Memorial Association. On May io of that year the association held a Memorial Day service here, possibly the first in the South. Here are buried 1,470 Confederate soldiers and officers 1,140 of them unidentified-who fell on battlefields near by.

19. FEDERAL HILL HOUSE (open by arrangement), behind church on SW. comer of Hanover and Prince Edward Sts., is a plain two-and-a-halfstory residence, its thick brick walls covered with white clapboards. The interior is handsomely ornamented. A paneled transverse hall contains a fine staircase and leads through an elegantly arched doorway to a drawingroom that runs the full length of the house.

The builder and the date of construction are unknown. After the Revolution Robert Brooke, governor of Virginia (1794-96) and a founder of the Federal party, bought the house and renamed it Federal Hill. During the war, it was used as a Federal hospital.

20. The JOHN PAUL JONES HOUSE (private), NE. corner Lafayette Blvd. and Caroline St., a small half-brick, half-frame structure, is the only house in America the naval hero could call home. It was owned by his older brother, William Paul, who conducted a tailoring business here after migrating from Scotland in 1758.

John Paul (1747-92) was born in Scotland. He first visited Virginia as a lad of 12, apprenticed to a shipmaster. During the next nine years he was acting midshipman, third and first mate on slavers, shipmaster, and finally master of his own boat. When his crew mutinied, he killed the ringleader and fled to his brother in Fredericksburg. In 1775, after seven years of obscurity, he appeared in Philadelphia, calling himself John Paul Jones and bearing a commission as senior lieutenant in the Continental navy. Then began his incredible career as a naval officer. He successfully attacked New Providence in the Bahamas and for a time convoyed supply ships into New York harbor; in a seven-week free-lance cruise between Bermuda and Nova Scotia he captured six brigantines, one sloop, and one ship and destroyed six schooners, one ship, and one brigantine; he cut his way through ice to save Americans on Isle Royale, burned a warehouse on the Acadian coast, took four transports, and on his way home captured another transport and a sixteen-gun privateer. Sailing to France with dispatches, he picked up two prizes and forced a British sloop to strike her colors. With the clumsily remodeled Bonhomme Richard, obtained for him by Benjamin Franklin, he entered upon a series of successful engagements and, in one of the great sea fights of history, caused the Serapis to ask for quarter. He often paid officers and sailors out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed until after the war. In 1787 Congress awarded him a gold medal. The next year, on Thomas Jefferson's advice, he accepted Empress Catherine's invitation to reorganize the Russian Navy. Though made an admiral and sent to the
Black Sea against the Turks, he was never given the superior command and lost Catherine's good will through the intrigue of rivals.

After the Revolution Jefferson spoke of him as a man of 'disinterested spirit' and the 'principal hope of our future efforts on the ocean . . .'He died in Paris at the age of 45 and was buried there in St.Louis Cemetery for Protestants. In 1813 his body was removed to the Naval Academy Chapel at Annapolis.

21. The SENTRY BOX (private), Caroline St. near E. end Dixon St., is a long frame house withgray weatherboarding, end chimneys, and a slender-columned front porch. It is somewhat remodeled, but the central portion remains much as it was. Overlooking the river, it was used during the War of 1812 and the War between the States as a lookout for enemy ships. In the garden to the left are the remains of an underground passage. The house was built in 1783-85 by the Revolutionary general George Weedon and later owned by General Hugh Mercer's son, Hugh Tennent Weedon Mercer.

22. GUNNERY SPRINGS, off Gunnery Lane, an extension of Ferdinand St., flow in a meadowy field below a steep hill. A concrete and brick covering over the springs was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution in commemoration of early women patriots. The Virginia Convention Of 1775 ordered the establishment here of a manufactory of small arms and ammunition, of which Charles Dick and Colonel Fielding Lewis were active commissioners. 'A hundred stands of arms a month'was the estimated output, besides repair to damaged guns. In 1781 Dick wrote Governor Jefferson that 'the Gentlemen of this town and even the Ladys have very spiritedly attended at the Gunnery and assisted to make up already above 20,000 Cartridges with Bullets as also above 100, Good Guns from this Factory.'

23. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HEADQUARTERS AND MUSEUM (Open 9-5 daily), NE. corner Lafayette Blvd. and Sunken Road, a two-story red brick structure in late Georgian Colonial style, exhibits military relics, a diorama of shell-torn Fredericksburg, and a model in relief of the battlefield. Slide lectures are given to explain battles in the neighboring area.

24. MARY WASHINGTON COLLEGE, entrance off Sunken Road at Monroe St., a group of 14 buildings on an go-acre campus, overlooks the city from above the wooded slope of Marye's Heights. Established in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women in Fredericksburg, it became the Fredericksburg State Teachers College in 1924 and was renamed Mary Washington College in 1938. Bachelor degrees have been conferred since 1935. The 1937-38 enrollment in the college was 1,428, in the training school 1,097, and the faculty numbered 48.